Georgina DeJesus was just 14 as she finished school on the chilly afternoon of
April 2, 2004.

She was supposed to take the bus and had been given the $1.25 fare by her mother, Nancy Ruiz, but had “a tendency to walk home and use the money” for snacks, Mrs Ruiz told reporters at the time.

In fact, Gina had been walking with a friend, who used a payphone to call her mother and ask if the girls could have a sleepover.

But the friend’s mother said no, the pair parted, and Gina disappeared.

Police sniffer dogs later traced Gina’s trail back to the payphone, but had no other lead. Residents were asked to look out for the seventh-grade pupil’s pierced ears and for the birthmark on her right leg.

Her disappearance, coming almost a year after Amanda Berry’s, prompted suggestions of a serial attacker. Yet it appeared to offer few clues to local authorities as to who might have taken the girls.

In 2006, police took in two men for questioning over Gina’s disappearance, but they were released after a search of their home proved fruitless. Later that year they dug up a garage elsewhere, but also drew a blank.

Still, her family never stopped believing that she was alive. “Every year there was a vigil for Gina,” her cousin Sylvia Colon said. “We were living every day in the hope she would come home - and she did.”